“Not just any Frisbee, neither, the original. And definitely not in the way you’d think. Not conked in the brain bin or nothing.” Jack rubbed absently at his overalls, years of habit from keeping the grease at bay, while he watched my eyes. “So?”

“Sounds like it might make a good story,” I chewed my lip and considered, “but I’m not sure it’ll get you an invite.”

“Don’t you worry, mister. I didn’t come out here to fix studio cars forever. I’ll make it a good one.”

“Great. I didn’t say so, but there’s a writer’s room job for whoever wins this. But it’s no shoo in you’ll win it.”

“Now, that’s just you haven’t heard it yet. I’ll tell you the whole yarn, mind you, then you’ll decide.”

Now, my grandfather Clyde, he was a big fan of pie. When he married Bessie, he wore out her interested in baking within the first few years, long before they got sick and tired of eachother, so Clyde would pack the whole brood, himself, grandma Bessie, the boys – who would grow up into my uncle CJ and my dad but were just squealing balls of puppy dog tails and pepper at that point – into their Woody and they’d travel everywhere that good pie was made. Now, since there weren’t no Yelp yet, nor any freeways for that matter, one depended on the authority of strangers.”

“No sir. Kind of unkind, what he depended on was that they knew their neck of the woods well enough to firstly indicate a good pie location, and secondly, know how to get there. Don’t look at me so funny. The authority of strangers is what y’all depend entirely too much upon now. Even more than then. Except now they call it ‘aggregate, anonymized data’ and so people trust it, because it looks pretty. But once, it was a guy who looked a lot like me, stepping out of a small repair shop a lot like this one to pump your gas, and he was expected to be a one man Encyclopedia, Atlas and Zagat’s guide all in one. Your GoogleWikiYelpMap all rolled into one. And he did a damn fine job. He could tell you the best place in five counties to get a shoe shine, or where the closest decent hoagie was on a weekday. It gave the corner mechanic as much clout as city councilman. It evened the field a bit. Now you’re lucky if the guy manning the pumps exists, and if he does, luckier still if he can find his own ass with two hands.

“Anyhow, I digress,” he continued, pulling a red cloth out of his pocket, wiping his lip, and putting it back. Faint smudges of grease marred his already decent five o’clock shadow, but I didn’t feel like it was right to stop Jack any more than I already had.

“So, one day, Jack and CJ get it into their heads they can get their dad to stay home for a vacation instead, and they buy a huge stack of ready-made pies, asking their dad to stay at home with them. They bring him one, all cooked up and pretty, and they all eat it together, right down to the inscription on the bottom of the time, before their dad still loads them up into the car, and makes them all go on yet another one of these little excursions. This time, one of these random mechanics somewhere in the desert leads Clyde and his kin to a little out of the way pie shop in a little one stoplight town that barely showed on the map, and Clyde was so impressed with the pies, he up and bought the place on the spot, for next to nothing. They were glad to be rid of it, seeing as no one else saw the virtue in that particular corner of nowhere.

Now, Bessie wasn’t having none of that. She left Clyde there to manage his pie shop, and went home to Galveston. Now, they might not have had much, but what they had was in Galveston, as was her family. It almost broke them up, but he stayed there almost all of that year. But, boy what a year. He bought up all the billboard space that suddenly became available alongside a new kind of road that was getting cut through that particular patch of nowhere. And so, when the freeway came through, Clyde became suddenly rich. That pie shop went from a little known nothing, to a short swoop off the road, a quick slice, and you’re back on your way to California, or Florida, or what have you.

Clyde brought his money home to Bessie and the boys, meanwhile, buying up neighboring space and turning that pie shop into a whole truck stop with curiosities, amenities, a motel and of course, pies. Clyde made himself quite the little empire in the sand.

By the time old Clyde died, that pie money had been funneled into two college degrees for my father and my uncle, nice houses all around, and steady, good lives for his boys. But, Bessie had wanted more kids, but hadn’t much of a husband left to father them. So, the boys had been her only children, grown up barely knowing their father, but spoiled and rich. The woody had become a towncar, which had then become sleek luxury sedans.

After Clyde’s funeral, the boys, now grown with wives and kids of their own, and who had idolized Clyde as one can only manage with an absentee father, decided to take a trip out to the pie stand their father had devoted his life to. When they got there, they were both stunned to learn that he hadn’t left it to them. No part of it. Not the pie stand, not the truck stop, not the motel. Hadn’t left any of it to Bessie neither. He’d left it to the gal behind the counter who’d been baking the pies since before Clyde had walked in to try his first pie. They’d never thought to find out, but learned right then and there that her name was Sadie.

Now, on the wall of Clyde’s office, which Sadie was busy moving her things into, was a pie plate that was mounted to a board, and it said, “THIS TERRIBLE PIE INSPIRED THE TRIP THAT LED CLYDE HERE.” And on it was the pie plate from the pie the boys had made their father so many years earlier, the inscription on the bottom reading “FRISBEE’S PIES.”

A’course, CJ and Jack were both fuming, and with no outlet for their anger. Couldn’t rightly be angry with their dead father, nor with the waitress who’d worked so hard, couldn’t even be angry with each other. They stared up at the pie they’d made their father and realized that nothing else in that office could rightfully be claimed by them as theirs. Sadie nodded and told them politely that they could keep it, and CJ impolitely told her to stuff it.

CJ stormed off, came back with a sturdy chair, and Jack climbed on it and reached to pull down the plaque commemorating their childhood failure. At this point, as he grabbed hold of the plaque, it made him top heavy enough that the chair toppled, but he landed safely on his feet. It was a close call. CJ pulled the tin off the backboard, and they played frisbee with it in the desert beside the pie shop, between the truck stop and the hotel, and then, pressure released, they tromped home in a state.

Every year after that, on the anniversary of their father’s death, they got together for a game of frisbee. Eventually, the kids got involved, and myself and my cousins would all get together for a reunion on that date, without really knowing why, and we’d all head out to a park somewhere outside of Galveston and we’d have us a little frisbee war. The tin got battered up something awful, so eventually plastic ones were bought, and the pie association was lost.

“Anyhow, just recently, my father died holding that tin frisbee.”

“…But, how did it kill him?”

“It got him with old age. He died clutching it because it reminded him that there was no way he and my uncle would have stayed in touch so long if they hadn’t decided to turn their dad’s shit inheritance into a game of frisbee. It kept them both alive longer, and the whole family better connected but that’s a double edged sword. What keeps you alive is also a little bit responsible when you do eventually die.”

I laughed.

“All right, fine.” I handed him a back door pass to the exclusive club. “It’s up in the hills, at that address on the back. Feel free to embellish and improve that story by another, um, hundred and thirty percent before then. Especially a few more close calls for your doomed father. Like when he fell off the chair. But more.”

“But they didn’t really happen.”

I stared incredulously, “Jack, if a good yarn ever had to try to stretch to fit the truth into it, it’d lose all shape.”

Jack looked down at his pass, rubbed it thoughtfully, getting a bit of grease on it. “See you tonight, Mister,” he turned and shuffled back into the shop to finish up his day’s work.

“So, you didn’t get any? How am I supposed to write down the spell without a pen?” Dan asked.

Lorna’s shoulders shrunk lower. “A pencil?” she smiled hopefully, being about the size of his hand, it was a little hard to tell.

“Do you have a pencil?”

Pressing her lips together, Lorna shook her head. Her purple hair floated around her head like candy corn. Dan wanted to be angry, but he only had to look once at Lorna’s small, stooped figure as she stood on his worktable, a miserable expression on her face and it was basically impossible to exert any anger. Instead he went to his desk for the third time and rummaged for some utensil, any utensil to write with. As he came up empty handed as expected, he glanced at the clock.

There were only 45 minutes left. He stared out the window as his mind contorted thought in such a way that a solution was not evident.

He glanced Lorna once before and thought of a leaf.

“Of course!” he exclaimed. Lorna’s head whipped up. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this an hour ago!” Dan grabbed something from the counter and rushed out to the back yard. He ran straight toward the black raspberry bush in the far corner.

A slam to his face and knees brought Dan hard to the ground. The containment spell had gotten smaller. Lorna twitted around his face, calling out frantically, her wings buzzing noisily. Dan waved a hand feebly. It held a small plastic bag.

“I’m ok. Fill this with the raspberries.” Lorna grabbed the bag and zipped away. Dan waited for the ache in his knees to subside before pulling himself up again. His nose throbbed, and he wondered if it was broken.

A blur near the raspberry bush, Lorna filled the bag quickly. She dragged it along the ground, it being too heavy for her to lift, and once she was through the invisible line that held Dan back, he lifted it and blew her a kiss.

“As promised, once this spell is broken, I will build you the best pixie house you have ever seen!”

A delighted squeak made Dan chuckle. If Lorna hadn’t come around that morning, Dan would have been perished in the ever-shrinking containment spell.

Back at his workshop, he hurried to make the ink need to create a banishment spell to counter his hidden prison. With just moments to spare, he finished the last flourish with the quill pen. The parchment sat, his calligraphy a beautiful deep purple. He looked at Lorna. She sat on the edge of a pot filled with daisies. Her hair had settled over her in thick waves. She must have felt his intention as her eyes glanced up, a sparkling gold. She gave him a meek smile.

A perfume of raspberry took over his senses. The ink on the parchment was smoking. Dan smiled at Lorna. “It’s working,” he whispered as though afraid of scaring the spell to sleep. Lorna buzzed into the air and silently clapped her hands.

When the last of the ink had vanished from the page, Dan felt a strange bout of dizziness. His body ached everywhere but his back seemed to be the most pained. The room twisted along with his stomach. He grabbed the counter and held on until the feeling passed. Then he went outside. He expected the force field to be gone. He expected to be able to continue life as usual, but things never seemed to work out that way.

Dan blinked as he looked around. He’d always been a decent wizard, maybe not the best but certainly not the worst. Today he was definitely on the lower rung. The trees were so high, he couldn’t see where they ended. The flowers were so big he could use them as umbrellas. A glint of white sparkled in his peripheral and he was pretty sure he had wings.

Motion pulled his attention to the right. He was rewarded with the most breathtaking face he’d ever seen. Perfect lavender skin, bright golden eyes and a glorious smile. And she was his size.

Lorna took his hand and Dan forgot about this new world, his new size and especially, Dan forgot about too many pens.

The trap sprung perfectly, and the odd little man plummeted to the ground with a scream and landed on his back. Piper was surprised, not that she had known what to expect when she laid her trap for whoever was following her through the forest, but she was certain it wasn’t this. It didn’t matter now, she had found the culprit, and now she had to figure out if he was friend – or at least friendly – or foe.

“What are you doing, spying on me?” she demanded, looking at the scrawny man at her feet with a fierce expression.

He spluttered, spitting leaves from his mouth and wiping dirt out of his eyes.

“I wasn’t spying!” he protested, holding his silver pipes out like a shield. “I was watching, only watching!”

“Watching what?” Piper said, still not sure of the little man’s intentions though she decided he didn’t look particularly threatening.

He wore a ridiculous floppy hat, and the brim fell into his eyes. He flipped it away and trained a bright gaze on Piper.

“Watching the others who’re watching you,” he replied, with a sly smile.

Piper looked around the woods, and for the first time felt a twinge of uncertainty. These trees were her home, and here she was queen. Her strange power kept those in the forest with teeth and powers of their own from bothering her, but the ancient giants held many secrets beneath their boughs and in their roots, so she could never let down her guard.

“Who?” she said.

“Don’t know,” the piper shrugged. “Just felt them staring.”

“You felt them staring?” Piper raised an eyebrow, and flipped her red braid over her shoulder. That was a new one, and her interest perked up. “What are you anyway?”

The piper huffed and stood up. He came to Piper’s knee, and muddy brown marks covered what skin she could see. He had no beard, but a thick mop of curly brown hair highlighted with green and gold stuck out from under the hat. “I’m a brownie.”

“Not much of your kind left,” Piper commented.

The brownie huffed again and muttered something rude under his breath. She chose to ignore it.

“So, why’re you helping me?” Piper said, cocking her head and studying the little man.

He in turn studied his pipes, turning them over and over in his rough hands, which looked large on his small body. “Because maybe you can help me.”

“With what?” Piper was more intrigued despite herself.

“I want to leave.”

“The forest?”

“No, the whole world. Yes, the forest.”

“Why?”

“You ask a lot of questions,” the brownie grumbled.

“I’m sorry. I don’t get to talk to a lot of people,” Piper confessed.

“Okay, I’ll ask a question. How did you know where I was hiding?”

“The music told me,” Piper said.

“I wasn’t playing.”

“You don’t have to,” Piper said. “I hear the music all the time. It tells me things, helps me.”

“And what do hear when I play?”

“More,” Piper shrugged, satisfied with the answer though it was woefully inadequate.

The brownie looked at her askance, then raised the pipes to his lips. He blew a simple tune, sets of three notes repeating over and over, tumbling over and under each other but never bumping into anything.

Piper closed her eyes and smiled. She heard water and earth. She heard the obstinate courage of the boulder that refuses to be moved by the river. But the theme which wound throughout was loneliness, a single star in a black sky, the first bird call to a new dawn, which echoed forever answered.

The notes faded, leaving a moment of respectful stillness in their wake, before the forest came to life with a song of its own again, the rustle of leaves, the chitter of small creatures, and the soft thoughts of the trees and stones all combining to create the familiar melody and constant backdrop to Piper’s life.

“So?” the little piper asked.

“I heard you,” Piper replied.

The simple statement struck the man dumb. His mouth hung open and he stared at her wide-eyed as a single tear rolled down his nose. It broke the spell and he swiped the wetness away, muttering something about a fly in his eye.

A feeling that Piper only remembered feeling in the dimness of the distant past washed over her, and on impulse, she knelt down and wrapped her arms around the man. For a long moment, he stood stiff and unmoving, then his arms came up to return the hug. The silver pipes clutched in his hand were warm against Piper’s back.

“So, what about leaving can I help you with?” she asked him, drawing back and looking at him earnestly.

He looked around, craning his neck to gaze up at the sky speckled with deep green leaves, and heaved a great sigh. Then his mottled face was creased with a shy smile. “Actually, I think I’d like to stick around for a bit longer. Would you care for some company?”

“Yes,” Piper smiled back, glad he had said it first. “Yes, I think I would.”

Gee’s gaze snapped up from the jar of honey she had on the counter, her finger still deep into the sticky substance. She briefly checked to see if her wife was within visible range, and when it turned out she wasn’t, Gee cast off the words, “No, not at all,” down the hallway.

“Good, because I was going to use that for something else. I know you wanted to try that new skin thing, but you’ll like the special diet cookies I’m going to make much more.”

Gee rolled her eyes as she much doubted that. Diet meant disgusting as far as she was concerned.

“Yeah, no worries.”

With a slurping noise, she dragged out a glob from the jar and held it pooled in her hand. The sticky gunk leaked down the side of her hand in little rivets, getting all over the counter as well.

“So, what do you want to do for dinner?” came her wife’s voice again, and this time closer, moving down the hallway. Gee’s eyes darted toward the bathroom, and she sprinted into it, closing the door and locking it with her un-honeyed hand—though still leaving some sticky residue on the floor both inside and outside the door.

“No idea,” Gee said and waited for the sound she dreaded.

It took a minute, with a nice preamble of silence, but came all the same.

“What’s up? Are you okay—” A quick suck in of breath, and a pin could drop and make a sound, and then: “Gee! Goddamn it! You little liar!”

Gee backed up as hands slammed on the door a few times.

“Come on, you promised!”

Gee’s breath came out slow for a moment, before she calmed down—the mundanity of this fight making it seem almost silly to find it a concern. With another pound on the door acting as a starting pistol to her, she moved the honey over her face, especially in the bags under her eyes.

“Are you hearing me?” came the slightly annoyed voice. Her wife too was sensible and would not make too much of a fuss about this, not really—beyond some glimmer of annoyance.

“Yes, yes, I am—and don’t get so mad. I’m doing this for you. You’re the one who gets to enjoy all the soft skin on my face.”

“Is that so?” came a voice with a slight flirtatious edge, but lost it within a syllable of the next sentence. “Still, you promised me. And how am I going to make those cookies now if you keep using up all my random food stuff as beauty products?”

“White sugar?” Gee said. “It’s not like I can spread that over my face.”

“I’m trying to lose weight,” she said, the sound now making it clear she was sitting against the other side of the door.

“Then you should not have cookies anyway,” Gee said and spread the honey over her neck, dabbing it into the small indents between shoulder bone and neck, around the collar. It felt cold there.

“I guess.” A slight scratching of nails against the door. “So… what should we do for dinner?”

Gee opened the door, and her wife stood up with a little glimmer of annoyance still in her eyes, but it melted when a chuckle escaped her throat.

“What?” Gee said, smiling at her.

“You look all glossy. What was that supposed to help with?”

“Pores…or something—they said it was a miracle cure.”

Her wife giggled into her hand and then continued to do so for another minute with a much stronger force to it. A few tears came to her eyes from her laughter.

“Sure…sure it will.” Her wife composed herself and smirked at her. “So, what do you want to do for dinner now? If you’re not full up on honey.”

“Funny,” Gee said, and touched the edge of her face, leaving a faint trail of sticky gold going to her finger. “I think we are going to have to get someone to bring us something—takeout I guess.”

“Don’t feel like going out with honey, honey?” her wife quipped and shook her head, still smiling.

“No, it would be unbecoming for two girls to go out on the town covered in honey.”

Her wife took a second to get that one, and only pulled back once a sticky hand touched her face, and left a little layer of sugar on it.

“Dammit…that will take forever to get out. I’ll have to scrub.”

“Well, I think you’re glowing—but if you must scrub it all off, then I think it will take about the time it would take to get a pizza,” Gee said, maneuvering passed her, going back to the kitchen, and checking a takeout menu.

“I’m on a diet, remember?” her wife said, walking in after her.

“Well, consider the lost cookies: now you have one cheat open,” Gee said, and dialed the number.

“You’re evil,” her wife said.

The dial tone still rang, so Gee shot in: “Yeah, but you love me so much.”

Her wife wrapped her arms around her, giving a hug from behind, and gave a squeeze, before just leaning somewhat on her, and listening to the dial tone go along.

To Jen, my forever side-kick. The world would be less adventurous without you in it.

“I need tassels, lots of body glitter, and pictures, or I won’t believe it,” she exclaimed.

“Are you drunk?” Sally asked her as she peered over the mound of books and magazines in front of her friend.

“What?” Amber said, flipping to a page that had three tabs stuck to it.

“Drunk. Are you drunk?” Sally repeated, taking a sip of her hot chocolate.

“No… Wait… Why?” Amber was talking faster than normal which made Sally wonder if she had way too much sugar and caffeine, which was entirely possible since they were on their third or fourth “holiday drink” that Starbucks was offering.

“Well,” Sally tried to make eye contact, “you just described what would be an amazing start to a bachelorette party or an orgy.”

Amber’s brow furrowed. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

Sally couldn’t help but think how scary this actually was. “You know we are planning a baby shower, right?”

“What?” Amber looked very confused. This was bad.

“We are planning a BABY shower for Michelle. She is having twins… So…” Sally watched a look of horror cross Amber’s face.

“It’s what it says!” Mayva protested, pointing at the old page with one hand, the other hovering over her cauldron, posed to drop an eye of Newt into the seething potion.

Well, I think it sounds fishy. You should read it again.

Mayva sighed and looked at the recipe again. “It says lizard,” she confirmed. “Hang on-” she leaned closer. “It looks like the first letter is rubbed out. Maybe blizard?”

Blizard eye? You do know that word is spelled with two z’s, right?

“Hey!” Mayva barked. “If you wanted to come down here and do this, be my guest. Oh, wait, you don’t have a body. So if you have something valuable to contribute, by all means, speak up. If not, shut up!”

An ominous silence greeted her tirade. She waited for George to say something, but the silence just stretched on.

“I’m sorry,” Mayva said at last. “That was low.”

It’s fine.

The curt reply wasn’t reassuring, but at least it was something.

“Okay,” Mayva said, infusing her voice with enthusiasm she didn’t feel. “Let figure out this thing, so we can get paid, and then move on.”

Wizard.

“What?”

It says wizard eye. It’s just half of the first letter that’s missing.

Mayva looked again and saw George was indeed right. Her disembodied friend had his uses. She searched through the witch’s cupboards.

“There’s no wizard eye in here,” Mayva said.

Don’t you dare start think about substitutions now.

“If I don’t get the duchess her love potion, we’ll be eating potato eyes and carrot peelings while sleeping in a doorway.”

Well, you’ll be eating peelings and sleeping in the doorway. I’ll be as comfortable or uncomfortable as I ever was.

“Thanks for the support,” Mayva muttered, already flipping to the back of the grimoire for the substitutions. “Okay, one wizard eye is equivalent to three drops of blue moonlight, the kiss of a dragon, two-sevenths of a thimbleful of ashes of a baptized witched burned on a cedarwood fire.”

Sounds like it might be simple to go find a wizard and dig out his eye with a spoon. You don’t think this hedge witch has those kinds of things here, do you?

“Actually she does,” Mayva said, holding up the moonlight and dragon’s kiss with a triumphant expression.

And the ashes?

“That’s what this is for,” Mayva said, flipping through the charts of substitutions.

She had to go back and forth quite a bit because the only listing for ashes of baptized witch was burned over a fire of oak and ironwood, so she found a substitute for cedarwood and fire, which included several more substitutions for rare ingredients like second-sight of a blind babe and shame of a broken warrior. After some fancy footwork, Mayva was left with a table of half-empty bottles and pouches and a steaming cauldron of thick, pink potion.

“Well, at least it looks like it’s supposed to,” Mayva said.

Haven’t you ever heard looks can be deceiving?

“Enough with the pessimism,” Mayva said. “We’re almost done.”

She filled a stopper with the potion and turned. She stepped on something underfoot and windmilled as she tried to steady her balance. She steadied herself on the table and managed to keep her feet, though the table wasn’t so fortunate. The ingredients and the cauldron slid to the floor with a great crash, and the essences and powders and the love potion spewed everywhere.

Mayva blinked and looked at the mess she’d made of the witch’s cottage.

“So much for getting out of here unnoticed.”

Mayva screamed in shock and spun to find someone standing next to her. “Who’re you?” she asked.

“You might not recognize the face, but don’t you know the voice?” the young man asked.

“ At 10:43 PM, exactly one hour and fifty two minutes before they came for him, Henry Bently changed his mind and decided he wasn’t ready to die.”

Henry Bently had decided he was going to make a difference in the world. He had spent most of his life being in the background of all activities. He was always kind and courteous. He smiled at people as he walked passed and held open doors for others. He was completely forgettable.

His job was easily forgettable as well. He filed documents at the city planner’s office. Although Henry was incredibly good at his job, very few people realized the ease they experienced in finding the required information they were looking for regarding projects and inspections was attributed solely to Henry.

It was late on a Friday when he first saw the plans. At first, it looked like a simple zoo, if you could say there was something as simple as a zoo.

The name of this animal preserve was to be called Up Close Animal Adventures. The park would even feature rides and other attractions. It seems you need to have roller-coasters of some kind to really ensure people show up. Animals, no matter how exotic, no longer had the drawing power they once did.

As he read through the plans, he found something a bit odd. Within the request were plans for a series of underground buildings. As he pored over the plans, he found it was to be a network of medical spaces. It was designed like a hospital and at first glance and to a normal clerk it would appear to be for the animals. However, that was not the case.

Although the plans had already been approved, Henry knew that the clerk had not looked deep enough into them or had been bribed into simply putting his stamp on the approved line. Henry would never take a bribe, but knowing what the city actually paid its employees and how terrible the benefits were, he understood why someone would take a bribe and not feel guilty.

Henry decided to do a little more digging into the corporation that was building the epic attraction. He spent most of the weekend following stories on the web. From those that were from legitimate reporting agencies to the conspiracy theory blogs, the paths all lead to the same place.

The new “Adventure” that was being built was also going to be used to do medical testing for military uses. Not only for animals, but on humans. It read like something out of the Island of Dr. Moreau or some terrible movie from the 90’s. It seemed that they were further along than most suspected in their efforts.

On Monday, Henry found he couldn’t concentrate. He kept being drawn back to what was going to happen when this facility was built. He finally took the issue to his supervisor. After a few minutes of speaking with her and then the department head, Henry realized that everyone was on the payroll so to speak.

He then decided there was something he could do.

If enough destruction occurred at the right time during the build, they would not easily recover. Plus, during the investigation, the right information at the right time would bring this all to light.

Although the “Park” would be insured, Henry was convinced that the underground facilities would not.

So over the next several months, Henry formed a plan.

Upon the final inspection, before the animals were brought in, Henry made sure he was the inspector. He would have access to every area of the facility. He knew he would have only one shot at this.

He had been surprised how easy it had been to acquire the C4 he needed. He knew how much he needed for each room and created small balls that he could drop or place as he went.

He had set the timer for 11:00PM. This meant the least amount of people would be at the site. He had walked the entire length of the underground facility with determination, stopping in every area and dropping his packages. When he had signed off and handed the approval on the permit to the site General Manager, he did it with a smile.

Although the authorities would wonder what had happened, perhaps a gas leak, Henry knew that the owners of the facility would find him, even if he ran. He knew he wasn’t trained to hide out.

He looked out the windshield of his car that he parked far enough from the site to be able to see it happen but not be injured and hoped he, Henry Bently, had made a difference this night and then he heard the first explosion.